Greenpeace

Greenpeace is an international non-governmental environmental activist organization known for its active campaigns to fight against environmental degradation and to conserve the Earth's biodiversity. Since its early beginnings and through the use of non-violent direct action, Greenpeace's members have been campaigning to stop atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, as well as to bring an end to high seas whaling. In later years, the focus of the organization has turned to other environmental issues, broadening its aims.

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 by a small team of Canadian and American activists who set sail from Vancouver, Canada, in an old fishing boat with the objective of stopping a second underground nuclear bomb test by the U.S. military beneath the tiny island of Amchitka in Alaska. Amchitka was the last refuge for 3,000 endangered sea otters and home to bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and other wildlife. Even though their old boat, the Phyllis Cormack, was intercepted before it got to Amchitka, the journey sparked a flurry of public interest.

The second mission was in 1972, when David McTaggart and two other members spent 70 days at sea stationed in the forbidden zone outside Moruroa, the Pacific atoll where the French government tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, so as to stop the nuclear tests. Although the bomb finally went off, the voyage of the Vega drew worldwide attention to nuclear weapons testing and renewed pressure on the French to abandon the program from many quarters, a program that ended only in 1996.

From then on, the organization that would later become the Greenpeace Foundation began gathering more public presence and members, their basis of strength nowadays. By the late 1970s, more than 20 groups across North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia had adopted the name Greenpeace. In a historical context of strong youth political commitment to fight for ideals, the ideas of the Green Revolution and the ecologism as a form of living started to gain adherents. Another memorable and widely known mission occurred in 1985 when a Greenpeace crew helped Rongelap's inhabitants (in the Marshall Islands) to evacuate their island because it had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

However, victories also carry deaths and bad times. Along with the campaign to end with the nuclear era, on July 10, 1985, two explosions on the Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior, rocked Waite Mata Harbor in Auckland. The bombs had been planted by the French government in an attempt to stifle Greenpeace's protests against the French nuclear testing program in the Pacific. As a result of such bombs, the ship was sunk and Fernando Pereira, a Greenpeace photographer, was killed. This day was remembered in Paris in 2005 when more than 500 activists from 21 countries formed a human rainbow and peace sign in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, among them Grace O'Sullivan, of the original crew.

In 1995, Greenpeace had another success when Greenpeace activists occupied the Brent Spar oil storage facility in the North Sea. Their purpose was to stop plans to scuttle the 14,500-ton installation that would contaminate the sea. The action was a part of an ongoing campaign to stop ocean dumping, and it pitted Greenpeace against the combined forces of the United Kingdom government and the Shell Corporation. In the end, Greenpeace, with a lot of public pressure, succeeded and the company agreed to dismantle and recycle the Spar on land. What was truly important is that Greenpeace's success led to a ban on the ocean disposal of such rigs by the international body that regulates ocean dumping.

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